Still, she was up to something, and somehow he doubted it was anything as innocuous as wanting a job at his club—even if Seductions was the finest one of its kind in the city. No, a woman with her kind of fire would probably punch the first guy who tried to get close enough to slip a twenty into her G-string. Besides, the look on her face as she’d studied those pictures hadn’t been curious or interested or revolted or scandalized—like so many of the people who passed by here. No, except for a brief moment right at the beginning, it had been clinical. Removed. Studious.
That in and of itself was so odd—most people had some sort of reaction to his club—that he found himself wanting to know more about this woman with the fiery hair and cool green eyes. This woman who was so full of contradictions he couldn’t help but be intrigued, even as he wondered if he was going to have to kill her—after he’d had his fill of her, naturally.
He didn’t like people who took an unusual interest in any aspect of his business; it led to problems. And this one, this one definitely had an agenda. He just needed to figure out what it was.
He continued watching that flame-red hair bob through the crowd, felt himself grow hard as he observed her. She walked quickly, without any excess motion, and yet the simple movements were more sensuous than anything he’d seen on the stage downstairs. As if she heard music no one else could and her body couldn’t help but respond to it.
“Tell them to find out her name and where she lives. What she does for a living. And tell them to find out if she’s involved with anyone.”
He felt more than saw Jim’s head jerk toward him, knew his bodyguard’s eyes were boring holes through the back of his Armani suit. But he didn’t turn around, didn’t take his eyes from the slight figure with the miles of bright red hair until she finally turned a corner and was gone from his view.
Then he turned to Jim and barked, “Do it!” before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a Cuban. He lit it with the gold lighter one of his girlfriends had gotten him—he could remember the shape of her tits but not her name—and waited for the information to pour in.
He found himself hoping that the little redhead was unattached, then nearly laughed at the absurdity of the whole thing. After all, it wasn’t like it mattered.
Chapter Five
Fuck it. He didn’t need this shit, and he sure as hell didn’t want it. Life was supposed to have gotten easier after he’d quit his job on Wall Street, not more difficult. It was supposed to have become slower, more relaxed. The last couple of days had been anything but, and today had actually given new meaning to the term FUBAR.
Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. Yep, that seemed to sum up his life quite nicely of late, and Byron blamed it all on Lacey. Ever since he’d met her, Fuckup seemed to be his middle name—one he sincerely did not appreciate.
Ignoring his screaming muscles, Byron did another set of push-ups in an effort to work off the frustration—sexual and otherwise—that had been eating him alive for the past three days.
First, he’d managed to screw up the conference table he’d spent days working on—the table that the governor had ordered to replace the one that had been in the governor’s mansion in Baton Rouge for nearly one hundred years.
It was all part of her new campaign to get Louisianans back to work. In order to promote her brainstorm, she’d picked several local artisans and commissioned each one to make a separate piece of furniture or art that would become a permanent fixture in the mansion for many years to come.
He’d been excited as hell when he’d gotten the commission, as it was a perfect spotlight for his work—especially since it came with a full photo spread in Southern Living magazine. Already, numerous other projects had come his way because of the commission, and he was damn grateful to have been one of the seven people chosen.
Not to mention the fact that he’d worked damn hard on that table—damn hard on his little piece of history—and today he had screwed it up. Royally. So royally that he doubted there was going to be any way to get the huge scratch that ran down the middle of the tabletop out. He was going to have to start over. And with time running short—he’d promised the governor the piece in pretty short order—he was almost completely screwed.
It was all her fault, he thought resentfully, as he punished himself with another brutal set. If he hadn’t been thinking of her, wondering what she was doing, wondering where she was, he never would have screwed up so irreparably. Never would have—
Damn it, where was Lacey? It had been three days since he’d caught so much as a glimpse of her. Three days since she’d walked out on him at Café du Monde without another word. Three days since she’d posted a fantasy on her blog—and he should know; he’d been checking it every couple hours like some kind of fucking addict.
Glancing across the courtyard at her dark apartment, he wondered—again—if she was all right. Wondered where she was. What she was doing. And who she was doing it with . . .
The questions beat in his brain, keeping time with the music pumping through the speakers behind him. One ninety-seven, one ninety-eight, one ninety-nine, two hundred. Byron finished off the last of the killer, one-armed push-ups just as Aerosmith’s “Helter Skelter” filled the room around him.
He sprang to his feet with a groan and headed over to the weight bench he kept beside the door to the balcony. Didn’t it just figure that he was nearly killing himself in an effort to take his mind off Lacey, and then a song like this had to show up and bring her right back, front and center?
What the hell kind of bad karma did he have going on anyway? Had he been a serial puppy kicker in a former life, or what?
Setting the bench press at 240, he lay flat underneath it and gritted his teeth as the song lyrics started to get to him. “Do you, don’t you want me to love you.”
Not that he was obsessed or anything. He was just concerned. And horny. And . . . obsessed. He groaned as he admitted the truth to himself, then pressed the bar up fast and hard as Steven Tyler seemed to be directing his taunts directly at him. “I’m coming down fast but I’m miles above you.”
And his father’s phone call earlier hadn’t helped his mood in the slightest. But then, the old man never did, no matter how hard Byron tried not to get into something with him.
“So, when are you going to give up this pipe dream of yours and head back to New York? I didn’t spend all that money putting you through Princeton so you could be some common laborer, boy.”
“I’m a carpenter, Dad. I make furniture.”
“I am well aware of what you’re doing now. It’s embarrassing. If you had kept your old job you wouldn’t have to do that shit. You could hire people to do that kind of work for you.”
If he’d kept his old job, he’d probably be dead by now—or at least halfway there. He’d worked twenty-hour days under incredibly stressful conditions. He’d had high blood pressure and insomnia, and had been working on a nice little ulcer. The doctor had told him he needed to change his lifestyle, or he might very well not make it to thirty-five, let alone forty.
So he had done what the doctor had ordered, done what he’d wanted to do all along. And he was happy for the first time in his adult life. That more than anything else made him want to tell his father to go to hell, to tell him it didn’t matter what he thought. But it would only have caused a fight, so he’d bitten his tongue until it bled in an effort to keep from telling his father off. One, because it never did him any good, and two, because he knew how upset his mother got when they fought. But it had been hard not to hang up on the guy; harder still not to tell him to mind his own damn business.
But he was his father, for better or worse, and Byron had struggled to remember that even when the man had—for all intents and purposes—called him a pussy.
“Dad, my old job was killing me. I couldn’t face the stress anymore, couldn’t face the twenty-hour days and the high-pressure stakes.”
“High pressure doesn’t seem to bother your brother.”
/>
“He’s a doctor. It’s different from being on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.”
“Yeah, he’s actually saving lives, while you’re cutting up wood. Damn right it’s different.”
Byron had suppressed a snort at his father’s words. His brother was a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills. And while he did do some work on burn victims, 90 percent of his practice was made up of boob, butt and nose jobs—not exactly life-saving procedures.
When he’d had enough of the same old song and dance—his father criticizing the hell out of him, and him trying to argue before finally giving up—he’d ended the conversation.
“Look, Dad, I know you’re not happy about my choices. You’ve made that abundantly clear in the last nine months. But I’m not living my life for you. I’m doing it for me.”
“Well, that’s obvious. You—”
“I’m not doing this anymore. I’m not. I’m happy with my life, happy with my job in a way I never was in New York. And who cares if I’m not making a ton of money right now? I made more than enough in New York to last me for a damn long time.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point? I’m doing what I love—I won’t apologize for that.”
“Of course you won’t. If you did that you’d have to admit you were a failure, just like you always have been. You’re too soft to make it in the real world, boy.”
They’d hung up a few minutes after his father’s pronouncement, and though Byron tried like hell not to let it get to him—he was more than happy with his career and the new life he was building for himself here—it was hard. Just once it would be nice if his father laid off the criticism, if he saw him as something more than his fuckup of a second son.
Before he could stop himself, he turned his head—yet again—so he could see Lacey’s apartment. Once again, he cursed as he realized it was still dark.
Where was she? It wasn’t like her to stay out this late, and it made him nervous as hell. New Orleans, while beautiful, wasn’t the safest city around. Not by a long shot, and it bothered him to think of Lacey out in it alone and unprotected.
Lifting and lowering the bar in time to the music, he tried to ignore the lyrics that hit far too close to home. Bad enough that it felt like half his time these days was spent trying to find Lacey, chase her, track her down so that he could talk to her like a normal person. Maybe ask her out on a real date or just hang with her awhile. The last thing he needed was for his favorite band to remind him of what a piss-poor job he’d done in accomplishing his goals so far.
How was it that she didn’t seem to share his interest, despite their interlude on the balcony? How could she just walk away without giving them a chance to play this thing out? Especially when they were so in tune sexually?
When her deepest fantasies matched his so beautifully?
When what she wanted was exactly what he needed to give?
“Tell me, tell me, tell me the answer.” The bar clattered down with a bang, and Byron picked up a nearby can of tennis balls and fired one at the OFF button of his stereo. Joe Perry stopped in mid-guitar riff and blessed quiet filled the room for the first time since he’d started working out—thank God.
It was one thing to wallow in his own self-pity; it was quite another to have one of his favorite bands mock him while he did it.
Lying back down, he did another rep of ten presses and was just about to start a fourth when a light finally came on in Lacey’s apartment. Sitting up so fast he nearly hit his head on the weight bar, Byron reached for his water and swigged half the bottle down in one gulp. Then tried his damnedest not to stare at her through her open blinds like some kind of Peeping Tom.
He failed.
With his tongue all but hanging out of his mouth like the dog he was, he watched Lacey kick off her killer shoes before heading out of sight. Narrowing his eyes, he squinted in an effort to see where she had gone, and nearly crushed his damn fingers as he absently rolled the bar over in the stand.
“Fuck!” He stood up with a growl, then shook out his right hand as he waited for the pain to go away. While he waited, he contemplated how desperate it would make him look if he went over and knocked on Lacey’s door. Probably less desperate than if he hung around and tried to orchestrate another “chance” meeting. Then again, that wasn’t saying a whole hell of a lot.
With another muttered curse, he grabbed his free weights and started doing biceps curls. This whole thing was ridiculous—absolutely absurd. He’d never suffered from a lack of confidence with women before, so the fact that it was starting now was a real pain in the ass. Especially since his dream girl was less than fifty yards away.
Maybe it was the new career, new city, new life that was throwing him off his game. Back in New York he’d been in familiar territory—doing a job he was good at, making tons of money, living in a city he knew like the back of his hand. Women had been the least of his problems.
But since he’d dropped out of the rat race and moved to New Orleans, things had been different. Easier in some ways, but more difficult than he had imagined in others. He couldn’t get used to the slow pace of the South, couldn’t find a comfortable rhythm to settle into. In New York, life came at you at two hundred miles an hour, but at least he understood that. Could accommodate for it and find his groove.
Here he was lusting after a woman who ran hot and cold and back again so fast he could barely keep up. It irked him, almost as much as his own inability to move on did. In New York, he would have been gone already. But here it just wasn’t that easy.
Maybe it was because he’d never met a woman in New York who mattered to him. There he’d dated when he’d had time, but there had been no woman as important to him as his job. No woman who kept him awake nights as he struggled with his feelings for her.
His arms were burning, felt like they were on the verge of falling off, but he pushed through it, hoping if he exhausted himself, then maybe he’d be able to find some peace. Some surcease from the raging demands of his body.
His laugh, when it came, was bitter. Yeah, right. He hadn’t had any peace since that balcony scene a couple of days before; had had even less since he’d found that damn blog this morning.
Even as he told himself not to look, he couldn’t stop himself from glancing into Lacey’s apartment to see if she’d emerged from wherever she’d gone. And nearly dropped a weight on his foot when he saw her standing in front of her open balcony door, dressed in a pair of skimpy black shorts and a white tank top. She was carrying a large glass of wine, and the look on her face said he wasn’t the only one who’d had one hell of a day.
Fighting down the instinctive urge to go to her—to comfort her—he continued his curls and did everything but stand on his head in an effort to ignore her. She’d obviously had a rough time of it, and the last thing she needed was him messing with her. He could handle a few more nights of sexual frustration. After all, it hadn’t killed him yet.
Byron did four more sets in quick succession, pumping fast in an effort to alleviate the hard-on that seemed to be a permanent condition whenever Lacey was around. By the time he set down the weights, his arms were screaming and sweat was pouring off him like he’d been caught in a goddamned rainstorm.
He reached for the towel he’d put next to the weight bench when he’d started this whole misadventure, but stopped dead when he realized that Lacey was out on her balcony.
And that this time, she was watching him.
Lacey’s eyes nearly glazed over as she watched Byron pumping iron. His chest was bare and his muscles bulged under the rapid assault of the weights. Sweat ran in rivulets down the tanned skin of his abdomen, pooled under the unbuttoned waist of his jeans. Had her aching for a taste of him when she should be running in the other direction.
Hadn’t she decided she wasn’t going to get involved with him? With any guy, until she was sure she wasn’t going to make the same mistakes she’d made with Curtis?
&nbs
p; She had, but as her eyes roamed over every one of Byron’s deliciously exposed muscles, she couldn’t bring herself to care. Besides, he’d make a hell of a diversion as she waited for Anne Marie Winston’s parents to call her back.
She’d called them as soon as she’d gotten home, hoping for what, she wasn’t exactly certain. All she knew was that she needed to talk to them, needed to know what had happened to Anne Marie and if she was in any way connected to Crescent City Escort Service. The fact that she was on the strip club wall proved that she’d been involved in something sexual in nature. Now Lacey needed to see if she could find anything connecting the girl to the escort service and the service to the club.
God, she really didn’t want her suspicions to be true, really didn’t want to be this close to a story on human trafficking. Her writer’s instincts told her if things had played out here the way she thought they had—and she could survive proving it—she was looking at a bestselling book for sure. But just the thought made her feel guilty, the idea that she might somehow be capitalizing on innocent girls’ terrible misfortune was more than enough to keep her up at night.
She thought back to the Web site she’d just stumbled on earlier when she’d been researching variations of Crescent City Escort Service. She’d clicked on what she’d assumed was a defunct link to the service’s Web site and had found instead a series of pornographic pictures, each one linked to a request for payment and a guarantee of more to come. There’d even been a discount offered for frequent users.
It wasn’t the link between porn and prostitution that was bothering her, though. It was the fact that at least three of the most violent pictures on the site had been of girls who had been arrested for working at Crescent City Escort Service, but who had disappeared after they’d been released on bail. Yet if the dates on the pictures were to be believed, two of them had been taken in the last few weeks.